Indie Pop Stars Black Castle Drinks in The Sunday Irish Times!

This bank holiday Sunday we were featured in an excellent article on the soft drink movement in Ireland written by Corinna Hardgrave for the Sunday Times in Ireland. 

We were thrilled to be the featured so prominently and love the picture - John's face makes us laugh out loud!! Our Black Castle craft sodas were in good company too, with Poacher's Tonic and Wild Orchard soft drinks also featured. 

Link to Sunday Times http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/ireland/indie-pop-stars-ntxtzlwnj

Our delicious craft soda cocktail, The Red Setter also appeared! It's a citrus and spicey twist on a classic 'Jemmy & Red'. Check out the cocktail recipe below. 

THE RED SETTER

This twist on the ‘jemmy & red’ is made up of refreshing citrus flavours and fragrant spices using our Spiced Red Lemonade.

You’ll need:
Black Castle Spiced Red Lemonade
40ml Irish Whiskey
20ml Triple Sec
2 Dashes of Aromatic Bitters

Garnish with a large wedge of pink grapefruit and enjoy! 

Black Castle Soft Drinks @ Hospitality Expo Dublin

This year we held a stand at the Hospitality Expo in the RDS in their Food Village and were delighted to meet a huge range of prospective clients from the hospitality industry. 

There's John living the dream, driving a huge transit van full of our soft drinks and stand on our way up to the trade show!

And here is our stand, decked out in all its glory! Complete with new posters of our cocktails taken by friend and Wicklow photographer Shane Doyle!

Happy to report we've been following up with lots of new clients and we should see our premium soft drinks popping up on even more shop shelves and pub menus!

Halloween Cocktail Inspiration: The Bride of Frankenstein

Halloween is just around the corner and here's what we'll be drinking this year: The Bride of Frankenstein cocktail made with our fruity Black Castle Berry Bramble Sting.

If you’re looking for something a little more sophisticated this year, you’re in luck. This potion is elegant and balanced—and spiked with just the right amount of hocus pocus.

What You'll Need:

1. 50ml Black Castle Berry Bramble Sting
2. 20ml Good quality Gin
3. Top up with Prosecco (Champagne or Cava will do nicely too)
4. Garnish with fresh Blackberries

Enjoy! Muaha hahaha!!!

Red Lemonade - Ireland's legendary soft drink

Ireland through the centuries has produced it's fair share of legendary drinks. We've all heard the folk stories about poitín, whiskey and Guinness but none of these come close to the school yard urban legends surrounding the most mythical of all Ireland's drinks - Red Lemonade.

To begin with, even the origins of red lemonade are shrouded in mystery. Several soft drink manufacturers claim to be the originators of our national soft drink (or 'minerals' as we like to call them in Ireland) but no one can seem to give an answer as to why lemonade became red in Ireland while remaining colourless in the rest of the world. What can be agreed upon is that this unique drink emerged at the end of the 19th century and became a staple of many of the mineral water factories that had sprung up in every large town in the country. It wasn't long before whiskey drinkers discovered that red lemonade worked perfectly as a mixer to their favourite spirit meaning that the children's weekend treat now became one of the pub's mandatory bottles.

Anyone who went to school in Ireland in the 90's will have heard the urban legend which explained that the reason you could only get red lemonade in Ireland was because the red colour additive used was carcinogenic and had been banned everywhere else. And to make matters worse, the EU dictators in Brussels were now going to ban our beloved red lemonade!  Thankfully, this all turned out not to be true and the Irish people's undying affection for the drink was untainted.

At Black Castle Drinks, unlike most other red lemonade producers, we don't add any artificial colouring or artificial sweeteners to our unique lemonade. Our Black Castle Spiced Red Lemonade is made with 100% natural colours and natural flavourings while being lightly sweetened with the finest cane sugar. But what really makes our Red Lemonade stand out are the warm spices we infuse into our recipe, giving it an added depth of flavour making it a perfect partner to Irish whiskey, or a sophisticated grown-up soft drink option. 

With such great natural flavour while still having that iconic appearance we all love and know, we think our Spiced Red Lemonade is already a legend in the making!